On the 31st Nelson reconnoitred the Hollander’s Deep. On the 1st April, the fleet weighed and anchored to the N.W. of the Middle Ground. In the afternoon Nelson took the ships assigned to the south end of the Ground and anchored for the night. His squadron was composed of the Elephant, 74, Captain Foley, the flagship; Defiance, flagship of Rear-Admiral Graves, whose captain was R. Retalick; Edgar, 74, Captain Murray; Monarch, 74, Captain Mosse; Bellona, 74, Sir. T. B. Thompson; Ganges, 74, Captain Fremantle; Russell, 74, Captain Cuming; Agamemnon, 64, Captain Fancourt; Ardent, 64, Captain Bertie; Polyphemus, 64, Captain Lawford; Glatton, 54, Captain Bligh; and Isis, 50, Captain Walker. There were also eighteen frigates, sloops, bombs, and fireships. The Danes, counting them from south to north, were the Prövesteen, 56, a three-decker cut down without masts; Valkyrien, 48, two-decker without masts; Rendsborg, 20, transport; Nyborg, 20, transport; Jylland, 48, two-decker, without masts; Suœrdfisken, 20, floating battery, masted; Kronborg, 22, frigate, without masts; Elven, 6, sloop rigged; Gerner, 24, battery, mastless; Aggershuus, 20, transport, mastless; Sjcelland, 7, two-decker, unrigged, Charlotte Amalie, 26, Indiaman; Söhesten, 18, masted, battery; Holsteen, 60, rigged line-of-battle ship; Infödstretten, 64, two-decker, masted; Hjeelperen, 6, rigged frigate; Elephantin, 70, line-of-battle ship without masts; Maro, 74, line-of-battle ship, mastless; Denmark, 74, rigged line-of-battle ship; Trekroner, 74, ditto; Iris, 40, rigged frigate; Tarpen, 18, rigged brig; Nidelven, 8, ditto; and ten small craft of four guns each. A glance at these lists is enough to show which of these two forces was the more powerful. Even putting aside the ordnance carried—which was 1014 pieces for the English, and 696 for the Danes, including the Trekroner forts—our opponent marshalled a number of weak little vessels quite unfit to meet the shock of the broadside of a line-of-battle ship.
The night before the battle was spent by the English fleet in further soundings in the unknown waters about it, and by Nelson in drawing up his final dispositions. It was his intention to enter the King’s Deep from the south, and advance as far as the Trekroner battery. It was very naturally understood that Sir Hyde Parker should give his support by attacking the north end of the Danish line with the ships which remained with him. They were the London, 98, W. Domett, 1st captain, Captain R. W. Otway, 2nd captain; and St. George, 98, Captain Hardy. She was, properly speaking, Nelson’s flagship, but he left her for the more handy Elephant, and Hardy accompanied on the day of battle. The others were the Warrior, 74, Captain Tyler; Defence, 74, Captain Lord Henry Paulet; Saturn, 74, Captain Lambert; Ramillies, 74, Captain Dixon; Raisonable, 64, Captain Dilkes; and Veteran, 64, Captain Dickson.
The wind blew fair from the S.E. on the morning of the 2nd April, and the signal to attack was given at 9.30. The ships stood in with various fortunes. The Agamemnon, which was to have led, had anchored on the east of the Middle Ground, and was not able to round the point. Her place as leader was taken by the Edgar which advanced till she was abreast of the Nyborg, the fourth ship in the Danish line, and then anchored by the stern. Then the Polyphemus anchored on the port bow of the first Dane, the Prövesteen. The Isis passed the Polyphemus and anchored on the quarter of the Prövesteen. The two vessels which followed, the Bellona and the Russell, misled by the mistaken belief that the water was deepest on the side of the Middle Ground, went too near the shoal water and grounded. Their misfortune, like the similar bad luck of the Culloden at the battle of the Nile, acted as a warning to those behind. The first of these, the Elephant, starboarded her helm, avoided the shallows, and took her station opposite the centre of the Danish line, where she had only the Elven and the Dannebrog opposed to her. The Glatton and Ardent anchored between the Elephant and the Edgar. The Ganges, Monarch, and Defiance went ahead of the Elephant. The Defiance, the furthest to the north of our ships, did not reach the northernmost point of the Danish line. The English bombs were stationed behind the centre of the line. Thus the Trekroner forts and the heavy ships near them were attacked only by the frigates under Captain Riou, which suffered severely. Parker detached three of the ships he had retained, the Veteran, Ramillies, and the Defence to assail the Trekroner from the north, but they had to tack against the S.E. wind, and could not reach a position in which they could be of service in time. The action began at 10 a.m. All the English ships were in position by 11.30, and the action was of the hottest till about one o’clock. The Danes fought very stoutly, and as men fell their places were taken by volunteers from the shore.
Colonel Stewart has left a most lively account of the bearing of Nelson in the midst of the conflict. In his narrative we see the small and alert figure of the admiral pacing his quarter-deck, the stump of his right arm leaping with a nervous movement, and his whole being uplifted with exultation. The work was hot, he said, but not for the world would he be elsewhere. It was the unaffected expression of the true nature of a man to whom the gaudia certaminis was no idle phrase. Yet the Elephant had but feeble adversaries, and was among the least severely tried ships in the line. Her 10 killed and 13 wounded was a trifling loss beside the 24 killed and 51 wounded of the Defiance, the 31 killed and 111 wounded of the Edgar, the 30 killed and 64 wounded of the Ardent, the 33 killed and 88 wounded of the Isis, an enormous proportion for a 50-gun ship. All were surpassed by the casualty list of the Monarch, the heaviest suffered by any of our line-of-battle ships in the war, 56, including her captain, Mosse, killed, and 164 wounded, a full third of her crew. Seen from the deck of the London, the position of the squadron looked more perilous even than it was. Sir Hyde Parker, influenced perhaps by Captain Domett was early inclined to hoist a signal of recall. There was a discussion between Kim, Domett, and the captain of the London, Waller Otway. Finally it was decided that Domett should go to the Elephant with a message to Nelson telling him that he was free to obey the signal to retire or to disregard it, as he judged fit. Domett did not go, for while he was changing his dress Captain Otway, who is our authority for the story, jumped into a passing boat to carry the message. He reached the Elephant through many perils, but before he was alongside, the signal had been hoisted and disregarded. Nelson, whose bearing shows that he regarded the signal as an order and not as a permission, did not repeat it. He gave expression to his derision by putting his telescope to his blind eye and declaring that he could not see the signal.
The order was in fact foolish in the extreme, for the squadron could only retire before the south-east wind through the narrow passage in front of the Trekroner forts. The signal was disregarded by Rear-Admiral Graves, and obeyed only by Riou’s frigates, which were getting the worst of it in their engagement with the forts. They retired, and Riou was killed in the retreat. Moreover, the fire in the southern end of the Danish line was slackening. Vessels were silenced and driven out of the line. In some cases the overpowered ships were remanned from the shore and the fire resumed. There was nothing irregular in this action of the Danes. They were perfectly entitled to retake prizes if they could, and a ship was not even a prize till possession was taken by the captors. But Nelson seized the opportunity to bring the action to an end. He sent his letter to the Prince Regent of Denmark, claiming a right to take undisturbed possession of the vessels which had struck, and calling the Danes brothers. The Prince Regent might well have treated the letter as a cry of distress. But he had good reason to avail himself of the opportunity to put a stop to the battle with credit. He knew that the Northern Coalition was in fact dissolved before the battle began. He had been informed on the eve of the 2nd April that the Czar, Paul, had been murdered in the night of the 24th March, and he was well aware that the new Czar, Alexander I., would not be allowed to follow his father’s policy. Therefore he agreed to arrange an armistice, and consented to stop his fire. Nelson took possession of his prizes and hastened to evacuate the field of battle he had won. The Elephant and Defiance grounded on their way out, a pretty clear indication of what must have happened if Parker’s signal had been obeyed under the fire of the forts. Nelson’s qualities as a fighter of battles were never more conspicuously shown than in this action, and they are not discredited in the least by the fact that, as many great captains have done (and will do to the end of time), he pieced out the hide of the lion by the skin of the fox.
The rest of the operations in the Baltic were of the nature of formalities. The Swedes would not risk the six liners they had in commission. While the fleet was in Kjöge Bay the Russians made proposals for an armistice which it was much our interest to accept. Sir Hyde Parker was recalled on the 5th May. Nelson, to whom the command came, hurried to Revel in the hope of catching the Russian squadron. He arrived on the 14th, eleven days after the Russians had cut their way through the ice and had sailed to Cronstadt. The polite letter he wrote to the Russian Government and his offer of a visit to St. Petersburg, were met with the dry comment that his words were not consistent with his actions, and a firm intimation that he must go away. He growled, but he went, and on the 19th June he left the Baltic at his own request.
The collapse of the Northern Coalition threw Napoleon into one of those fits of convulsive fury in which he stormed with all the epileptic rage of an Italian plebeian. He found what consolation he could in accusing the English Government of having paid for the murder of the Czar. But he still persevered in his efforts to send direct help to his army in Egypt. As we have seen, he was driving Ganteaume hard all through the spring. And he had another scheme on hand—a scheme which was the forerunner of larger plans to be laid in the course of the next few years. The French Government had purchased six Spanish ships of the line then lying at Cadiz. They were to be manned by French crews and commanded by Dumanoir Lepelley. The three French liners of Ganteaume’s squadron, discarded by him at Leghorn, the Indomptable and Formidable of 80, and the Desaix, 74, were to sail from Toulon to Cadiz. The nine were then to be joined by six Spaniards under Don Juan Joaquin Moreno, and the fifteen were to sail for Egypt, picking up soldiers in Italy on their way. It would be rash to say that Napoleon would not have made movements corresponding to these with his armies. He did many rash things with his armies, and while he was aided by fortune and the timidity of his opponents his audacity was successful. But on land his armies were handled by himself, were superior in quality, and his opponents were nervous. At sea such daring was too bold, for the superiority lay with the English. They knew it and were confident. In this case the plan was particularly wild, because Sir James Saumarez, an excellent officer, was cruising in the Straits, with seven sail of the line, and was therefore at the very meeting-place of these forces.
On the 13th June the three French ships named above, together with the Muiron, 38, a frigate taken from the Venetians, left Toulon under Rear-Admiral Durand Linois, carrying a detachment of troops, under General Devaux. Ganteaume was in the midst of his rush to Egypt and back. Warren, whose station was the Gulf of Lyons, was away looking for him. Linois was able to leave the Gulf unopposed, but not unobserved by the frigates Warren had left behind him. Those, and they are apparently many, who suppose that a port can “command” a sea may observe that Minorca proved no obstacle to Linois. His voyage was slow, and it was not till the 1st July that he passed Gibraltar. He was informed that there were only two English ships off Cadiz. On the 3rd July he captured the brig Speedy, commanded by Lord Cochrane, afterwards the famous Earl Dundonald, and learnt that there were in fact seven, and that they were across his road. Napoleon had spoilt, or had materially helped to spoil, his own plan for the relief of Egypt by his cunning. He had spread a story that the united French and Spanish ships were to attack Lisbon. His purpose was to draw the attention of the English Government from the Levant. What he did was to convince his enemy that Cadiz must be closely watched, for Lisbon was not only the capital of our most trustworthy ally in Europe, but was a most important depôt of English trade. Therefore Saumarez had been sent from England on the 15th June with the Cæsar, 80, Pompée, 74, Spencer, 74, Hannibal, 74, Audacious, 74, Thames, Phæton, frigates, and the Plymouth lugger. He was joined in the Straits by the Venerable, 74, and Superb, 74.
Here then was a warning example of what was likely to be the end of all schemes for uniting squadrons which started from far distant ports, and in the face of an alert enemy who operated on interior lines. They could only succeed if these squadrons to be thus united had been efficient. And then all this ingenuity would have been superfluous. Saumarez could not have kept his station outside of Cadiz for twenty-four hours if the thirteen Spaniards, then in the port, had been more than the vain show of a squadron.
When he discovered what was in front of him Linois turned into Algeciras Bay and anchored on the west side. On the south he was covered by the Isla Verde, where there was a Spanish fort. On the north he was supported by the battery Santiago. The shore is foul with rocks. There were fifteen Spanish gunboats to give him help. He anchored the Formidable at the north end, opposite the Santiago fort; south of her was the Desaix, and next to her the Indomptable. The Muiron was placed north-west of the Isla Verde. On the 5th July Saumarez, acting on the established rule of the navy, attacked. He had with him six of his seven liners, for Captain Keats of the Superb, who had just been detached to the mouth of the Guadalquivir, was unable to rejoin in time. The English squadron rounded Cabrita point at about eight a.m., and fell on as well as they could. For fortune helped the French greatly. The wind was light and erratic. The English ships could not come into action either when or where they wished. Linois landed soldiers to fight the ill-manned Spanish forts. The English ships at the mercy of alternate puffs of wind and calms, could not come into action together, and were badly mauled. The Cæsar, which engaged the Formidable and the Desaix, was nearly beaten to pieces. But the worst fate befell the Hannibal, Captain Ferris, for she grounded, was shattered thoroughly, and compelled to surrender. The French ships had cut their cables and had beached themselves. Saumarez too had drawn off, finding it impossible to press his attack thoroughly home.